Fans aren't profitable, perhaps?

[roadriverrail]

I asked this question over on my fandom's message board, but I have a bunch of Smarty McSmartypants people on my friends list, so I'm posting this here, too, to get some discussion going up

Comments

[nihilus]

Additionally reality tv is a whole lot cheaper to produce than scifi... So if they can get the same or better ratings with a cheaper show, of course that's what they'll do and the fans will suffer and wait for the next bone we get tossed (which then gets canceled just as it's getting really cool, of course).

Probably related to attention span, really.

[roadriverrail]

Probably related to attention span, really.

This is actually something else I suspect. Network heads aren't idiots. Sure...fans bitch about shows getting canceled, but it seems we always move on to new shows. So, the cost of cancellation isn't really that high from a business perspective.

[roadriverrail]

And to be fair, SciFi didn't cancel SGA. The parent company of SGA's studio...I think that's MGM...did. SciFi is just the first to get the blame because fandoms mistakenly see themselves as somehow being stakeholders in SciFi. As far as I'm concerned, SciFi is just a brand, and it has no more mandate to genre than Discovery has to discover things or HBO to show nothing but movies.

And yeah, they play tons of crap. The problem, I think, is that fandoms casually assert they'd make more money if they did what the fandoms want. But if we accept that businesses seek to make money, and they do the opposite of what fans want, doesn't it follow that that's where the money is?

That's just my opinion, too, and I could be wrong. I think, however, that you're on the right track-- they're putting out cheap TV that makes money.

[nekidsteve]

wait. is this an open invite to be my normal smartass self?

[podling]

Well, but SciFi is part of a larger company that owns crappy movies that they used to show more on other channels. I'm not sure how much they make off making their own crappy movies, but I'm sure they're not paying that much to show crappy movies made twenty years ago about giant snakes or whatever. And you know what? People watch it, companies pay for ad time, and in the end, they make money. It's not a company run by sci fi geeks for sci fi geeks, it's a company that like all companies is out for some cash.

The only thing that sort of bothers me? The name of the channel is probably a misnomer, I think ION actually shows more science fiction programming than they do, and that's not saying much. Frankly, in my opinion, even the networks have been showing more original sci fi programming than SciFi in the last few years (and then usually canceling it, but that's not the point).

[lizzyborden711]

instead of replying with a real response...

*sighs with mst3k nostalgia*

that is all